Three major parts make up this book: “A Management Perspective on Realtime Software,” “Preparing and Managing the Software Development Process,” and “Design Methodologies.” The “Design Methodologies” part takes up about half of the book, with the other half divided evenly between the first two parts.

Part 1 consists of six chapters:

• What is “Realtime Software?”

• Architecture--The Critical Need

• Concurrent Engineering and Software Development

• Quality

• Establishing System Requirements

• Management Commitment

Part 2 also contains six chapters:

• (7)Understanding the User Environment

• (8)Developing the Project Organization and Plan

• (9)Developing a Requirements Document

• (10)Controller Analysis and Functional Specifications

• (11)Developing Contracts and Work Statements

• (12)Managing Relationships

Part 3 comprises seven chapters:

• (13) System Architecture

• (14)Concurrent Software Development

• (15)Platforms and Common Development Tools

• (16)Documentation

• (17)Getting to Project Closure

• (18)Project Cost Overruns

• (19)The Post-project Analysis

An appendix includes a small example project, and the authors supply a short bibliography of 20 items.

The intended audience is software practitioners and managers involved in realtime software development. The book contains no exercises and is not suitable for an academic course. It could be used as reference material in a continuing education course. The writing style is informal and conversational.

Much of the material could be applied to any software development effort, real-time or otherwise. A small amount of material is specific to real-time systems. The material seems to have been distilled out of the authors’ experience in software development and training. They seem to be minimally concerned with what has appeared in other software engineering books and in the literature in general.

I found little that was new, and much of the material has been dealt with better, and in more depth, in other books. The book might serve as an overview for managers who are not interested in technical details. I would not recommend it for practitioners.